Live in Concert: Green Day 8/15/09

It's rare I see a big name band at the top of their powers. I tend to gravitate to the nostalgia circuit in an effort to either catch one last glimpse of a former favorite (John Mellencamp, Steely Dan), or play catch up on someone I ignored back in the day, only to finally come around to their brilliance later (Def Leppard, Camper Van Beethoven). So, I was on the fence whether to bother with Green Day since, I'm sure, they'll be around long enough to see them in some package deal with the Offspring, Sugar Ray and Live in about 10 years (that's usually how it works).

But, I went against tradition and decided to see the real deal in all it's present glory. I'm glad I did. It was an especially welcome example of fan payback compared to the distant stiffarm from Trashcan Sinatras a couple nights earlier. If you want to see it done right, see Green Day. Surprisingly, I'm not even the world's biggest GD fan. I self-identify as a product of the 80s, while GD are totally and completely aligned with the 90s (no matter how crucial their more recent work is), so they never belonged to me. There isn't a moment in my life that's capped by a GD song (they were completely ubiquitous during my first days and months and year after my mission, but by then my innocence had been lost and songs didn't carry the weight they did during adolescence).

However, it occurred to my while watching the show that no band in the last 15 years have more effectively and exactly held a mirror to their generation than Green Day have. Let's explore the parallels.

First, they were birthed out of the early 90s grunge scene. While not being grunge themselves (I heard a lot of Social Distortion at first, which no one ever mentions), they were harder edged rock and that was in style (finally). Also, their attitude was that of a slacker who sat around their parent's house aimlessly daydreaming about what to do next, both in the macro sense (for a job) and the micro (what's on TV). Songs like "Longview" (a song about masturbating while stoned) and "Basket Case" (name says it all) perfectly summarized in clear and direct words how the youth of America were feeling at that time. The message was powerful, millions listened and followed. They had yet to lose their innocence.

As the indulgent 90s wore on, messages like that became less and less immediate (even the Clinton administration became mired in sex scandals, probably out of a lack of anything better to do). After a couple years of living the slacker dream, it was time to grow up and growing up can be hard, especially if you are ill-equipped. Green Day's next few albums, while trying to expand on the snotty punk that had painted them into a corner, made less impact and the band found themselves as irrelevant as a guy in his late 20s still getting high in the basement.

Then, suddenly in September of 2001, the country woke up. Woke WAY up. Shaken from their juvenile stupor, Green Day got wise. Feelings began to boil inside, like anger and skepticism and frustration, that weren't there before not pointed in this direction anyway. Matters became more important. But, this is the generation that gets their facts from the Daily Show. They aren't reading the New York Times, rather they're obeying their media heroes. Information funneled this way may not be complete, but it's potent and it sparked one of the most miraculous turnarounds rock has ever seen. And, once again Green Day were talking in a language their generation, as well as just about everyone else, could understand when they released American Idiot, the album that changed everything.

American Idiot managed to take the bits of facts and soundbites of the media and regurgitate them in a way that incited action. It gave words to the feelings of the less informed that the New York Times couldn't touch. It didn't have to. All this generation needed to hear was our President called an Idiot. That alone made us feel better and, God knows, no one else was doing it. It managed to direct that anger at the singular person who embodied the trainwreck our country was racing headlong into. Who is this idiot and why are we listening to him and what can we do about it? It was also a huge smash.

Fast forward five years and Bush is no longer in office and Obama has assuaged some of that anger, but now what are we left with? Christian fundamentalism. A new great depression. A whole ton of residual frustration. If American Idiot said "I'm pissed!", 21st Century Breakdown says "I'm still pissed because I still don't see any reason not to be!" If Green Day's career isn't the trajectory of, what Pepsi called Generation Y, I don't know what is. They go from uninformed slacker, to Daily Show educated, to media ingestion 24/7, just like everyone else.

The best part about the show was how they got the crowd involved, inviting people up to the stage to sing backup, play guitar, stage dive, you name it. The highlight was when a 12 year old boy came up to play "Jesus of Suburbia" with the band. Green Day made these people's lives better. That 12 year old gets to go to school and tell his friends (not to mention the bullies who may beat him up) that he got to jam with Green Day in front of a few thousand people. That is what being a true rock band is all about, knowing enough to give back to the people who got you there. Green Day know this. They live by it. And it helps to ease the anger.

Live In Concert: James 10/02/08

At this stage of my life, it’s rare that I see a band for the first time whose catalog I am intimately familiar with. After James broke up seven years ago, I assumed I would never have the chance to catch the energy of this great band in a live setting. Until, that is, I saw that they reformed, released a new (really good) album, and hit the road. Good things don’t just come in small packages, they come in surprising and unsuspecting ones too.

I have always heard that James write their songs in a jam setting. Much like the Grateful Dead, though sounding nothing like them, members just start banging away at a groove and lead singer Tim Booth provides the words, often stream of consciously. From these jams come songs that run the gamut from darkly subtle and dense to all out anthems. Seeing them live gives you the feeling of what it must be like to be in the room when their magic is flowing. The songs don’t jam endlessly at all, in fact they’re very tight, but the energy that was there at creation is obvious.

The band also did an excellent job at momentum management, a major pet peeve of mine. They started the show slowly, almost too slowly, playing three of their moodier songs including “Dream Thrum”. Just when you thought you might be lulled to sleep, out come the big guns, the James most of us are pining for. The slow songs are wonderful, but what makes James a great band is how deftly they do moody and bombastic and mix the two on an album. Too much at either speed severely off-sets the balance. The truly mind blowing thing, and let this be a lesson to every other veteran band out there, it was the new songs that got the party started. If only bands realized that if they want to sell us the new stuff, they need to present it in a package that feels lived in and also exciting. James rocked to “Oh My Heart” and “Waterfall”, both off the new album, Hey Ma, back to back. It takes major skill and cajones to get the crowd to actually increase the decibels for the new tracks instead of hitting the bathroom. Well done.

From there the show did what most shows do, jump all over the catalog for the career highlights (“Ring The Bells”, “Sit Down”, and “Out To Get You”) while sprinkling in additional new songs. The band was on fire, just as you would hope/expect, and Tim Booth’s divine voice hasn’t lost a speck of clarity. Seriously, is there a more gorgeous voice in all of rock? Possibly even better suited for the theater, it is one of rock’s tragically underrated miracles. Those in attendance uncovered another of his hidden talents, the guy gyrates like a maniac. It was funny and endearing at the same time.

I went with four friends, all of whom didn’t know each other before the night started. We chose to stand near the back behind the sound board where there was a set list. Much to my broken heart, my favorite James song, and one of my top 5 all-time, “Born Of Frustration”, was not on the list. I consoled myself by saying maybe they forgot it or the rest would be so good, I wouldn’t notice. “BoF” was a single, not some forgotten album track, so I’m confused why it wouldn’t be on there. This almost ruined the night for me. Until….

With five songs left, Tim said the beautiful words, “We’ve hit you with a lot of new stuff tonight. Let’s get back to the songs you know” and then tore into ‘Sound”, my second fave James track. It was epic, complete with bullhorn and everything. Then, like manna from heaven, I heard what I had paid for, the opening keyboard plunks of “Born” and my night was certified perfect. God had heard my prayers and magically included it even if it didn’t appear on the set list. This was followed by Tim climbing into the crowd and singing “Say Something” a few feet away from us. Then came “Sometimes” and the capper of all cappers, “Laid”. Just what you’d expect. The perfect show-ending touch was them inviting about 50 concert goers to come up on stage and get their ya-ya’s out for “Laid”, arguably their most anthemic of all the James barnburners.

(One note of interest to almost nobody. Anyone who's been around me much, knows that I wear my yellow Trashcan Sinatra's t-shirt all the time. One of the guy's who jumped on stage was wearing that same shirt, the only other time I've ever seen it anywhere. Another weird thing is that I had been wearing my shirt all day and planned to wear it to the show, but then wore it to the gym instead. Interesting little coincidence or boring tidbit?)

Being able to cross James off my list of bands to see before I die is pretty major. Any fan had to question whether the day would ever come again. Like I said, God must have been hearing my prayers.

Live In Concert: The Dandy Warhols 9/27/08

Due to a few too many artistic detours that didn’t always pay the listener back, I put the brakes on my love affair with the Dandy’s a few years ago. It hit its peak in 2000 with the release of their third album, Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia, featuring the now ubiquitous song “Bohemian Like You”. “Thirteen Tales” was just about perfect and not only have they not reached those heights in the three albums since, they don’t really appear to be trying or caring.

Their live shows are among the best out there though. The Dandy’s have extreme reverence for the Velvet Underground, and by association, Andy Warhol, the Factory, androgyny, heavy drugs, and other bands that have followed in the wake of the VU like Spiritualized, the Dandy’s closest relatives. Their band name isn’t just meant to be cute, it’s practically a mission statement. They’re fully capable of covering a wide array of styles from old country, to straight up pop, to spaced-out psychedelia, or even all three, and then some, in the same song. Their greatest strength, and the thing most appealing to me, is what I call “space management”. They create a mood by filling the air with sounds that enhance said mood, whether it be an unsuspecting harmony, or a pregnant pause before a guitar strum, or a sustained note, or a keyboard blip. The songs that last seven minutes are usually more satisfying than the ones over in three. They kicked off the night with my favorite song of theirs, “Mohammed” and ended with my second favorite “Godless”, which are the perfect examples of what I’m talking about.

When I first saw them in 2000, they seemed embarrassed by the popular songs and chose to ignore them in favor of the more experimental stuff. Now, as their albums get more and more experimental, like this year’s extremely underrated Earth To The Dandy Warhols, their shows seem to embrace more comfortably their commercial leanings. They have 3 songs that most people know, whether they realize it or not, “Bohemian Like You”, “Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth” (sample lyric: “I never thought you’d be a junkie because heroin is so passé”) and “We Used To Be Friends” which was used as the theme to “Veronica Mars” among other things, and they played all three and played them emphatically. They weren’t just good to hear, they were good to hear from them. It seems to speak to a peace of mind that the band may finally be finding.

One moment kind of irked me though. This is a direct quote from lead singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor. “We just released our new album on our own label, so we are now officially an indie band!” A statement like that would only be made by a bunch of posers, which is a label that has plagued the Dandy’s since day one. Up until this new album, they were signed to Capitol Records and their songs were used for commercials and TV shows, surely lining their pockets in the process. The indie community sees a dichotomy in behavior with this. You can’t truly be indie, no matter how much you claim to be, if you’re on a major label and catering to the masses. I’ve never been bothered by this because I love them and want everyone to love them too, so if they hear them in a movie that’s a good thing. And, maybe being released from Capitol is what’s brought on the peace of mind they’re exhibiting. I just wish they hadn’t said something so shallow. I’ll forgive it though.

Like any worthwhile relationship, we’ve had our rough patches, but we’re soul mates. They’re the lover I’ll invite back into my life again and again because I need what they have. Coming to terms with this is a wonderful release.